Bark Beetles: Here, There, Everywhere, Even in Wired

The U.S. wood flooring industry is all too aware of invasive pests that threaten this country's forests, and now popular media are taking notice. Exhibit A: a blog post on Wired today with this opening line: "Ecological catastrophes are unfortunate. But they can be utterly fascinating, too." Author Brandon Keim gives an overview of invasive fungus-eating beetles that bore underneath a live tree's bark, grow fungus they later eat, reproduce and get out of Dodge as the tree dies. Biologist Jiri Hulcr, who supplied a range of excellent photographs for the blog post, said that, while beetles remain a major threat to forests in the U.S., there is a dearth in researchers looking at the beetles, which mostly originate from Southeast Asia. At risk are thousands of oak, pine, poplar, ash and other species of trees, particularly in the American West, where the problem is so widespread that it has given rise to "beetle-kill" wood flooring, which features blue coloring from wood stained by fungus. Author Keim details how, in the fungus-eating beetle world, females dominate and do most of the dirty work, while the males are around mostly for mating. Female beetles could not be reached to comment on any possible parallels between their kind and humans.